I'm not sure just how important it is to register in on this, but unless myths are exposed they will never be dealt with. This idea, "Withdrawal symptoms are hell, and unpleasant, but not life threatening," is one of the most unbelievable and extraordinary lies with which the medical profession has ever satisfied itself. "Oh...heh, heh...you may feel like yer gonna die...and you may wish you were gonna die...but, chuckle, chuckle, you can't die from withdrawals." Garbage, garbage, garbage. If you piled up all the poor souls who have died from withdrawals, you would have the equivalent of the China Wall. There is a great deal of research I have put into this (unlike all the people who pretend to know this "undeniable fact"), and I can't put it all down here for lack of space. But I will give you a couple of things to chew on all by yourself in your spare time.
1.) There is no data to back up this statement. Not one heroin addict who has, in fact, died flopping like a fish has been diagnosed correctly. In the unlikely event that some poor junkie even had an autopsy, there is no diagnosis available to the coroner he can write down that says, "Died from lack of heroin," or the equivalent. In every case it will read, "heart failure," or some other organ breakdown. But how many poor souls found dead in a gutter somewhere get an autopsy? They shovel you up, write "natural causes," and plant you. Is it any wonder the medical profession contents itself by saying, "No one has ever been diagnosed as dying from withdrawals"? No such diagnosis exists.
2.) Consider the assault on your system. The real question is, how can people NOT die from withdrawals? Use some average person as your example. This person has a balanced chemistry, not addicted, no tolerance. Now introduce an equivalent amount of what anybody who is seriously strung has been taking into their system. What's a fair example -- 3 or 4 hundred mg of morphine? The dose is lethal. It will kill them. Now reverse the sequence. The test person is balanced at 800 mg morphine/day. Now take it away. The assault on the person's system is exactly the same when you take it away as when you add it. It's the body's inability to adjust to the difference quickly enough that is lethal. The shock is too great. There are those who have survived by virtue of a strong and robust constitution, but if you assault a weak system, it must yield.
3.) It is well known that addicts die young. Just what, please, are they all dying from? Certainly some die of toxicity and other system breakdowns, but don’t tell me none of them died from withdrawals.
I’m not going to monopolize any more of this space with this subject, because it may not be the right venue, even though there is much more to be said, but I invite anybody to back up the statement, “Withdrawals are not life threatening.”
One Of Us,
Rider