I don’t know if it really matters whether most people are harmed from an adverse drug reaction or from an overdose…
The point is that cocaine, even when a minimal amount is ingested, CAN be extremely harmful. You’re rolling the dice on whether or not it will be harmful to you.
Another aspect is withdrawal. I’ve been told that even one-time users experience discomfort when “coming down”. Maybe someone else can comment on this.
Uh, if someone did an autopsy on Sunny Von Bulow, her family (children) might be interested to know. Last I heard, she was still alive. In a coma, but “alive” in legal/medical terms.
[sick hijack]
My favorite Joan Rivers’ joke of all time:
Q: What’s Claus von Bulow’s favorite song?
A: “When Sunny Gets Blue.” [Johnny Mathis hit in the 60’s]
[/sick hijack]
please see previous “feeble brain” comment.
I would not lie to you folks about my mental resources.
btw, just to double check, John Belushi was an actual person, right? I didn’t make him up?
Wow, this is amazing, I don’t recall saying I had scientific evidence about this. My statements have been mostly anecdotal and I have never claimed otherwise. I have been trying to contribute what I personally know about cocaine to this thread since I apparently have a lot more personal experience with cocaine and cocaine users than most people here.
I never said it never happened. Just that it is a lot less likely to happen from coke than alcohol. Many agree that the actual scientific research that has been done on this topic is inadequate, we aren’t sure how many casual users of cocaine there are out there so judging the danger of it is difficult. I am simply contributing my experience, and I do NOT think it is immaterial. People are saying fatal overdoses on cocaine are commonplace. If someone who has known lots of cocaine users has never known one to OD, that DOES refute that statement.
Why the hell not? Are you saying that computer techs are THAT much more likely to use coke than the general populace? Well, that MIGHT explain why I know so many coke users then, if most of the cocaine users are all working in a few fields.
I think you are trying to invalidate what I am saying because I DO have some experience and knowledge about this, some learned from books, articles, etc., some learned from life experience, and it contradicts what you want to believe.
** then you should probably state “in my experience” instead of this:
or this:
**
Good, except when you make generalizations based only on your experience. My personal experience comes from: A. I was a college student in the 70’s LOTS of drugs were all over the place, damn near all of my friends did assortments. B. For the past 20+ years, I’ve worked with thousands of ex-offenders, from all walks of life (prior), many of whom were cocaine users. C. Many of my close friends ALSO work in the fields of corrections and substance abuse. D. I personally know, outside of A, B and C, many people who are former drug users (through AA/ALANON etc.) So, my collective experiences are of a segment of several hundred cocaine and other drug users. In addition, I have studied (clinically) drug addiction and use materials.
**
Ah, but you also said, with authority :
and :
(emphasis mine) So, what you were doing was implying that since in your personal group of known users, you didn’t know anyone who’d died, and some one who’d injested a great quantity and didn’t die, the risk wasn’t appreciable. That’s called flawed logic.
and as for any individual’s death more likely to occur due to alcohol vs. coke, well, since alcohol consumption GREATLY surpasses cocaine consumption, that would be a given, and of no significance to the argument.
A. I’m not saying your contribution is immaterial, just that your logic is flawed, as evidenced by the second part of that snippet. Your personal group of acquaintance DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A SCIENTIFIC SAMPLE. therefore, NO conclusions can be made relative to the general population from your group. If it makes you feel any better, the group of folks I know from corrections doesn’t either. However, my statements are based on the COLLECTIVE experiences of: My personal friends, my clients, my friend’s clients, my associates in AA etc, other info from studies etc. adding up to thousands of users, so probably would be more likely to be representative than the subgroup of tech support people that you personally know who also do cocaine.
In order to make a scientific study or to base any assumptions on the population as a whole, you must have a random sampling.
No, I’m saying the group consisting of computer techs is NOT a random sample in any sense of the word.
No, I’m refuting what you state since your methodology is as flawed as your logic. and, that it also contradicts what I personally have studied through 20 + years of working with the populations I’ve described PLUS the assorted other experiences posted here from other professionals who have worked in the field. We are taking as our sample pool, not just our own personal group of friends, or co workers, but additionally, the folks who enter into hospital treatment centers, rehab places, emergency wards etc.
wring, as long as we’re talking flawed methodology here, then you shouldn’t even be weighing in on this topic. to wit, this is a thread regarding moderate cocaine use. of your sampling population (statistics sampling, not coke sampling), you say this:
That’s supposed to be a fairer sample of the population?
another example of flawed reasoning occured here:
no, what would be a given is more individuals dying. higher societal use of a drug does not increase the LD50 of a substance.
now, all that said, I do believe that you have valid contributions to make to this board. but please keep in mind that this message board is in no way scientific! what we all rely on here is heresay and anecdotes. call people on it if you see them asserting such things as ‘proof’, but don’t be surprised if you are called on it yourself.
peace.
juicy bits
Man, I stayed away from the boards a few days and was sure this was gonna end up in GD before dying out…
I’m furtively raising my hand while looking over my shoulder for the feds, in case you couldn’t tell.
IIRC, Belushi died of speedball, which is coke and heroin, which is ALWAYS a bad idea. Something about toxicity. See also: Janis Joplin, River Phoenix, et al. In any case, it’s probably smart for overwieght folks to avoid stimulants in general, including caffeine and nicotene.
I’ve always harbored a suspicion that those 21 year old prime of life types you always read about OD-ing on “moderate” amounts of blow are really macho jock types who would otherwise be drinking beer through a funnel at a frat party, thus dying of alcohol poisoning. Probably snorted a whole 8 ball at once cuz they were too tough/stupid to ask how big they should cut the line the first time… just a mpsims…
you know I almost put in something about “yea, this isn’t a sampling” either. I should have. But in fairness, I was relating to statements about cocaine deaths, cocaine use over the population as a whole.
one point I did try to make with our friend is that a statistical sampling of “my friends” is very unlikely to have any use for generalizations to the population as a whole. However, the statistical sampling of " my clients, my friends clients, my business associates clients, my friends and my associates" would be a bit * more * likely to have use for generalizations to the population as a whole since A. we’re not relying simply on folks I personally would choose to hang with and talk about illegal activities and B. the sheer number is more.
It is true that my sampling would not be mostly classified as “casual users”, but, the point was attempted that 1% of the population were casual cocaine users (based on his friends), that death by cocaine was not likely (based, again on his friends), that since his friends hadn’t died, that information would seriously skew the numbers/incidents sited by myself and others. So. say I know 1000 cocaine users. 25 have died. He knows an additional 20? 30?
and none of them have died. Does that change my nubmers significantly? nope. (2.5 percent vs. 2.42 percent) Does his additional 20 or 30 cocaine users that he knows personally extrapolate to any potential percentage of citizens that use? nope. Does my sampling extrapolate to the population as a whole as users? probably not, but much more of a wider base than his.
Right on about the methodology - I have seen so many people in this thread talk about how they know how dangerous coke is because they worked with convicts, or addicts, or because their brother-in-law was an addict, or whatever. If someone is an obvious coke-head, they are one of those people who do have the tendency to get addicted, and they are already far down the road of having it destroy their lives.
People tend to keep their cocaine use secret, for very good reasons. All it takes is one misguided or vengeful person to call the cops and get you sent away for a long time. It’s hard to know who the casual users are unless you are using yourself, but once you are chummy with a crowd that parties with it, you will meet a lot of people from all walks of life who use cocaine with moderation.
And my detractor seriously missed my point about the lethality of alcohol in comparison to cocaine. I was NOT talking about how more people die from alcohol use than cocaine use, if you read my post you’ll see that. I know more people drink than do coke. I was talking about how drinking 5 times the amount of alcohol it takes you to get slightly drunk will kill you while doing 50 times the amount of cocaine that it takes to get you slightly high will probably not. I’m sure that if cocaine was just as popular as alcohol there would still be a lot more people dying from alcohol poisoning than cocaine overdose.
Sorry you think of me as a detractor, my tone may have been more harsh than I desired. For that I apologize.
If you go back and read, “my” experience INCLUDES all sorts and varieties, and yes, including a great number who ended up in treatment and prison, but also people who used “casually” (college friends, co-worker or two, other folks I knew).
The problem with the term “casually” is that most folks I knew that USED cocaine at all, reported their use as “casual”, even the ones doing time, hence part of the problem.
I would suggest to you that perhaps some one who was ABLE to snort up 5 lines of cocaine immediately prior to the cops coming in, despite thier characterization of their use, perhaps were not really “casual” users, either. I won’t bore you with the scads of specific stories about users I know. Just a thought.
In any event. Is it likely that some one will die on their first exposure to cocaine? No. Is it impossible? Also no.
Is it likely some one will become addicted (psychologically) to cocaine upon their first use? I don’t know that anyone knows.
Is there any reliable method to figure out what percentage of the population currently or has ever done cocaine? I don’t think so. While my “sampling” pool may not be a scientific sampling, I would submit that by virtue of both it’s relative size and component (people from every socio economic sub group, racial backgrounds, wide variety of professions or the lack thereof, age brackets, educational background etc.; PLUS that it contains both people from my personal and professional life, they DO however all come from the central part of Michigan, which can skew the results), that my observations would have merit.
My biggest concern would be though if we attempted to make generalizations based on the subgroup “specific profession in a small geographical area who have admitted to using cocaine”. see, if we did that, we could poll the group of say “Ministers” from Ohmaha and get an entirely different picture of cocaine usage than if we polled the group fo “Entertainers” from Los Angeles, and radically different still than the group of Grade school teacher from Tampa.
This does NOT mean to imply we should not listen to the experience of the Minister from Omaha, just that we should be wary of saying “well, guess no one uses cocaine anymore” based on their experiences.
Ok? Peace?
If I were to drink one cola beverage daily with moderate amounts of cocaine in it (well under a gram), what would the potential risks be? Assume that I’m healthy and dont have a pre-existing condition (i.e heart problems).
If you get hooked on heroine, no worries, you can always use morphine to wheen you off of it. Big prob with the horse though, it makes your veins colapse, then you have no blood circulation, so start shooting up between your toes where no one can see your rotten feet, then once you get hooked go ahead and destroy the rest of your body.