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Why Does Fentanyl Feel So Good?
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Fentanyl must be amazing: loads of people
give up on everything that makes life good for it.
Their loved ones, any other possessions or
pursuits, homes, their dignity and even their lives.
But actually Fentanyl is garbage Heroin,
inferior in every single way but one.
It's the perfect drug for dealers.
And while we hear a lot about how deadly Fentanyl is,
many people it kills are not even Fentanyl addicts.
It is truly the dumbest drug to ruin your life for.
Let’s learn what Fentanyl does to you, what it
feels like and why it’s so much lamer than heroin.
Pain and Pleasure
Maybe the two most important forces that
guide our survival are pain and pleasure.
Pain may be the most visceral physical experience.
A claw ripping your flesh.
A bone cracking.
Rejection eating your soul.
Pain can be scary and unbearable –
it’s the strongest signal our
bodies have to make us avoid harm.
Pleasure is what makes life good
because it feels...well, amazing!
Eating things that are sweet or high-fat, having sex,
or opening another booster pack with your friends.
Anything that makes you feel
pleasure makes you want to do it again.
These two opposing forces guide you through life.
Pain shouts “Stop! This is bad!”.
Pleasure cheers “More! Do that again!”.
But while they are opposites, they are also linked –
sometimes our body needs to end
pain and create pleasure at the same time.
After giving birth, pain gets toned down
and the mother is showered in happy hormones
so she can bond with the newborn child.
During an intense hunt, the hunter forgets
the physical exhaustion and minor injuries.
Both are technically not great experiences
but need to be repeated for our survival.
And nature invented a powerful
mechanism to achieve this:
The mighty opioid receptor.
It's like a keyhole on the neurons
that control pain and pleasure.
If activated it reduces pain and
how much you care about pain –
and it creates pleasure and good feelings.
The details are complex and
not relevant for this story.
What you need to know is that any molecule that can
fit into an opioid receptor like a key, is called an opioid.
Opioids are extremely powerful,
so when your body uses natural opioids
like endorphins when you laugh,
it releases only a tiny amount,
exactly where they're needed.
So the effects are mild and localized.
Your sprained ankle feels better,
a painful memory subsides,
you get a boost of happiness meeting an old friend.
And now we are getting to drugs.
Humans found opioids in nature, like
Morphine, and were quite taken by them.
They got refined into a whole family of drugs used in
hospitals and to relieve patients that are in immense pain.
Codeine,
Oxycontin,
Vicodin.
And of course Heroin and the worst of all:
Fentanyl.
Before we can explain why Fentanyl is the
most garbage drug, we need to do something fun.
Let’s inject some heroin together!
Ready?
The Supernova of Pleasure
Heroin rushes through your entire body
and flips every opioid receptor it finds.
A rapid cascade of things happens everywhere, all at once.
A symphony of intense sensations.
Every cell regulating pleasure is now high.
Without their control floodgates of happy hormones
open and fill you up top to bottom with pure bliss.
A cup of coffee? A nectar of joy.
This song you like? A celestial symphony.
A cuddle? Pure love from the center of the universe…
Wherever you felt pain before, from wounds or
aching joints or menstrual cramps, or loneliness
or self loathing – it's gone now. You are simply
unable to feel pain or care about it anymore.
Like dimming the lights in a cozy room
your brain’s alert system is put to sleep
and you feel at ease, warm and serene.
Any stress melts away and
dissolves into a dreamlike haze.
You're no longer worried or tense about anything.
This peace even spreads to your
essential organs, slowing your breath,
soothing and slowing your intestines.
Your chest rises and falls like
the gentle waves of a quiet shore.
You are sailing a sea of calm and
happiness that feels perfect and eternal.
The full load of a strong opioid
like heroin, for the very first time,
is one of the most amazing
feelings humans can experience.
For a few hours you are in heaven.
And this is exactly the problem.
Your brain is not equipped
to handle anything like it.
You feel too good.
But nothing lasts forever
and now you are in trouble.
You just experienced the
best feeling you ever felt.
Your brain's reward center is completely
fried and can’t comprehend what happened.
If what you did felt this good, it has to be amazing
for your survival and you should do it again.
Except you can never ever feel this good again.
This will be your peak life moment forever.
You may forever chase this feeling
you had this very first time.
And now you are back in the regular world.
With your insecurities, where your knee hurts,
regular tasting coffee and having
to work hard for happy hormones.
Comparison is the thief of joy, and now you have
your life to compare to a supernova of bliss.
The indescribable feeling comes with a damage to
your sense of life and self that may be irreparable.
And this is not even the worst:
opioids are incredibly addictive – and the
addiction among the worst you can have.
The Supernova of Pain
Once you’ve taken opioids a few
times, your brain has had enough.
The cells controlling pain and pleasure
are constantly high and drowsy.
So it boosts them and makes them hyperactive.
This happens very fast, sometimes
after a few days of use.
You've developed an opioid tolerance, toning down
all the nice effects you are doing the drugs to achieve.
To feel like before, you’ll need way higher doses.
Now you are at a crossroads.
Quit and have your system go
back to normal fairly quickly.
Or keep going and take more.
You take the wrong turn.
Over the next few weeks your brain keeps
pushing back and you keep taking more.
The effects are not quite what
they were, but still mildly nice.
Until one day you can’t get opioids and
realize your body is now your enemy.
Your systems are so hyperactive that they make
you feel the opposite of what the drug was doing.
Welcome to withdrawal.
It all starts with a creeping unease.
Instead of being euphoric and happy,
nothing feels good anymore.
Your coffee is tasteless.
Your favorite song lame.
Your loved ones distant.
A storm of negative emotions
shatters your sea of calm.
Serenity is replaced by anxiety and angst,
like something terrible is imminent.
Your worries, insecurities and
all the fears you suppressed
aren’t just back, but amplified
into an existential crisis.
You’re so restless you can’t sit still.
Your heart is beating too fast.
You shiver. Sweat. Hyperventilate.
Your pain circuits are now oversensitive, so your
bones and muscles ache and hurt for no reason.
Old wounds, physical and mental torture you.
You have belly cramps and
diarrhea and have to vomit.
You’re too agitated to rest.
A war inside your body that you can’t escape.
And of course there is the craving
screaming for you to make it stop.
Your mind and body beg for a hit.
You can be in this state for up to two weeks.
Or make it stop right away.
Ok so why not just take heroin
forever and feel amazing always?
The fun thing is that it doesn’t work this way –
you get tolerant to the nice effects, like euphoria, faster
than the bad ones, like dangerously slow breathing.
So it turns from touching the love center of the universe
to mostly drowsy numbness and relief from withdrawal.
Now you don’t take opiates to
get to heaven but to avoid hell.
You're in a prison of your mind and body,
unable to connect with all the things
that could actually make you feel good.
Opioid addiction is brutal and
extremely hard to escape.
It should be pretty clear that you need to
be extremely careful with any opioids –
and if you have the chance
to do it for fun – just don’t.
There is a very real risk that
your life might just be over.
And that you'll go through hell.
Now that we have seen the heaven and hell of
Heroin, we can get to Fentanyl. The garbage drug.
Fentanyl is Really Garbage Heroin
Everything we just described is true in
different intensities for most opioids.
They can be great, all of them can be hell.
Heroin is just sort of the strongest.
Except it isn’t.
Fentanyl is around 50 times
more potent than heroin –
but this doesn’t mean 50 times
more amazing, quite the opposite.
Fentanyl is extremely good at
crossing the blood-brain barrier,
the firewall that protects your
brain from harmful substances.
It enters your brain so easily that you get
from 0 to extremely high almost instantly.
But just as fast as it enters, it leaves again.
A Heroin high can last six hours,
one from Fentanyl can fade in minutes.
Fentanyl doesn't feel as good as Heroin.
Instead of a supernova of bliss you
mostly get the black hole of nodding away.
But it comes with all the withdrawal symptoms.
As a bonus, because Fentanyl acts so quickly on
your brain, it fries your reward center even more,
making it even more addictive than Heroin.
And since you only need so little of it, it's
super easy to overdose and die by accident.
It is the deadliest illegal drug in US history by far.
Between 2013 and 2023,
it killed about 400,000 Americans.
Fentanyl really is garbage Heroin.
Too dangerous, too intense,
too addictive, too little fun.
But then why are so many people taking it?
Well. Actually, nobody wants to.
Fentanyl is not for users.
It’s for dealers.
The House Always Wins
Fentanyl is a drug dealer’s dream.
One truck load could supply
the entire US for one year.
It's cheap to make and easy to smuggle.
Heroin needs plants and
fields and way more space.
So garbage Fentanyl just
took over the Heroin supply.
It might have seemed great
for Heroin addicts at first.
And then its trap snapped close.
While some people may
seek out Fentanyl specifically,
several studies have found
that most opioid users try to avoid it.
Even worse, a lot of people who die
from Fentanyl, don’t take it willingly.
Dealers want people to
come back for their product.
And by adding a tiny trace of Fentanyl to
any drug, they can make it more addictive.
Even if people don’t realize they took
an opioid, they'll feel its effects.
So dealers started to mix all
kinds of drugs with Fentanyl,
turning the entire US drug market into a
minefield, where any trip can be your last.
Because way too often, they
put a bit too much in their mixes.
In 2022 the combination with pills
– often counterfeit oxycodone and
benzodiazepines – accounted for
about 20% of all Fentanyl deaths.
In 2023 the US authorities seized
115 million pills with Fentanyl.
70% contained a lethal dose.
About half of Fentanyl overdoses
came where you expect it the least,
from stimulants like cocaine and meth.
A lot of people may have taken
these mixes on purpose,
but many others just wanted to party
and weren't ready for an opioid surprise.
This is especially dangerous because, if you’ve
never tried opioids, you can overdose very easily.
Fentanyl really has no
upsides outside medical use.
For dealers and cartells it means easy profit.
For users it means a worse
opioid addiction and a worse life.
For people who would never ever try it, it can
be a death sentence they didn’t see coming.
No matter how alluring they are using opioids, even
in safe settings, is playing with fire on the best of days.
Fentanyl is a garbage drug that
turns this fire into a raging furnace,
increasing the risk of death massively.
There really is only one conclusion to draw here:
if you have the choice, don’t step
into the supernova of pleasure –
because the danger of it turning into
a supernova of pain is just too high.
Getting to the root of an issue
requires looking at all sides
and thinking critically about
the information we consume.
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This is why Ground News is
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harder punishments for Fentanyl smugglers.
Fewer than 75 sources worldwide reported on
the story – but the headlines were quite different.
You can follow along by
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Some of them were critical and compared the
policy to the war on drugs in the 1970ies.
Other sources praised the step
and said it could end the crisis.
And some media outlets asked if the
smugglers are really the problem
and if policy makers shouldn’t focus on
the problem of demand in the US itself.
The interesting thing is that no
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Reading the news this way lets you compare different
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