(June 17, 2012 at 8:54 pm)Shell B Wrote: That's not true, Gringo. A withdrawal is a physical symptom caused by cessation of a drug. A rapid decrease in serotonin causes physical and mental symptoms, thus withdrawal. Withdrawal isn't always the shakes. Why do you think they call SSRI withdrawal withdrawal? It is precisely the same thing, a decreased amount of serotonin. By precisely, I mean exactly the same thing.
The sympthoms you feel the days after you use MDMA, are not withdrawal Shell, they are analogous to the hangover you feel after you abuse alcohol. Alcohol causes a liver congestion that creates those very known sympthoms. MDMA on the other hand causes an overuse of serotonin, that is recovered over the next days.
Addictive drugs like opiates, meth, cocaine, etc after regular use, block the serotonin receivers on the brain, meaning you in the long term can only get the feeling of pleasure and satisfaction with another dose of the drug. Its completely different and people that have gone through an addiction know this very well, since it takes a long time (years) for the individual to regain some of the hability to feel the everyday pleasure we get from our activities.
Quote:Now, all of this is irrelevant to my point that is not up to strangers to chastise adults for personal choices. Drug use =/= addiction.
Okay, perhaps the way I've gone about it makes it look like chastizing, but the point was made and this discussion only went in a good direction by my standarts, since we've discussed the problems that drug use may lead to. My point was directed to the (perhaps unintentional) advertizement of opiates, and these do cause addiction by regular use, along with nasty physical sympthoms. It may have been directed to an adult, but you know better than me that not all forum users possibly reading this are adults.
Adults are free to do whatever they want with their lives, that's a given, but posting how much one loves opiates, without speaking of the consequences of said drugs, may influence a young reader to use them.
