I recall reading a book where a guy used these meds to lose weight. One thing he found was that because he was overeating due to depression, removing his appetite left him a bit stuck because his coping mechanism had been taken away. I would worry that if you're drinking due to an emotional issue, exposing that issue so immediately could have serious consequences if it didn't come with some serious support.
Yeah IIRC the current state of the addiction medicine model is that the drug use of addicts is maladaptive but that there is a real illness or suffering that at one point it gave relief from, or the user thought it would. So someone who gets addicted to opioids after knee surgery is in the same category, doing the same thing, as an alcoholic who started drinking so they wouldn't have nightmares about their abusive childhood. Or whatever. The addict may not always even know explicitly but there is a reason they initially started using in this way.
If you get someone off their normal drug, they a) have none of the other tools or coping mechanisms to deal with the initial problem, having failed to develop them during the years of using drugs instead and b) are grappling with the full and unattenuated experience of whatever caused them to start using in the first place.
People newly detoxed from a long addiction are particularly vulnerable to new addictions and need a lot of support and resolve to develop the intrapersonal emotional skills they've been neglecting. And in some cases picking up a new addiction is the less harmful option. I'm not particularly a fan of AA (but not anti either) but it turns out there was wisdom in their common advice for newly dry alcoholics to not worry about their cigarette or coffee or candy intake. Smoking won't kill you this week but drinking might, you can deal with the nicotine addiction next year.
basisword|4 months ago
giraffe_lady|4 months ago
If you get someone off their normal drug, they a) have none of the other tools or coping mechanisms to deal with the initial problem, having failed to develop them during the years of using drugs instead and b) are grappling with the full and unattenuated experience of whatever caused them to start using in the first place.
People newly detoxed from a long addiction are particularly vulnerable to new addictions and need a lot of support and resolve to develop the intrapersonal emotional skills they've been neglecting. And in some cases picking up a new addiction is the less harmful option. I'm not particularly a fan of AA (but not anti either) but it turns out there was wisdom in their common advice for newly dry alcoholics to not worry about their cigarette or coffee or candy intake. Smoking won't kill you this week but drinking might, you can deal with the nicotine addiction next year.