Matt: What’s going on everybody? This is Matt and Greg with Projects Unbroken. Do us a favor, hit that subscribe button and share this video with anybody that you think it might help out.
Matt: Today we wanted to talk about the difference between pills and heroin. There’s a lot of talk out there about how similar the two are and we want to dive into the details a little bit.
Contents
Prescription Painkillers (The Sneak) vs Heroin (The Hurricane)
Greg: Yeah. So pills and heroin, very similar but also very different. The withdrawal is very similar. The addiction to them is very similar, but when you’re on them I think the feeling is different and I also think heroin is more dangerous.
Greg: So pills for me always gave me a more synthetic high feeling. I felt the same feelings, but there wasn’t as much drowsiness, there wasn’t as much body high for me and it just had a different synthetic feel to it. Whereas heroin, it was more gripping, it kind of gripped me immediately. Pills I was able to control while the heroin just like gripped me up, like really strong. So it’s weird. So even though it’s the same type of feeling and it’s both opiates, heroin had a totally different grip on me.
Matt: Yeah. I have a tough time understanding what exactly that was.
Greg: Yeah.
Matt: Because if you watch some of our older videos, Greg and I talk a lot about how we got into our addiction and the path, which I think is very similar for a lot of people who are in similar circumstances, but the path from occasional pill use, to more aggressive pill use, to heroin and then it seems to spiral out of control for a lot of people. Because maybe for, I don’t know, a couple years we seemed to manage pill abuse.
Pills Seem Somewhat Controllable…
Greg: Somewhat control it.
Matt: Somewhat control it, at least where we still had like … we owned a business, we were employed, we were still kind of checking off the boxes for being normal behaving members of society. But then heroin-
Greg: Functioning addicts as they’re called.
We Were Functional On Prescription Painkillers
Matt: Yeah, we were very functional. Heroin came along and it was almost like in three to four months everything fell apart. The business went under, our friends started going to jail. It spiraled out of control and I had a tough time going through it. I was like what the hell is going on? I was in court more, I was in prison more. It was just really reckless and the change was more drastic than the drug itself made me feel. I didn’t notice a big difference between the high necessarily, but something about the overall addiction to heroin was way more aggressive.
Greg: Yeah. Again, it is very, very hard to explain the difference between the two, but you definitely got to say heroin is more deadly and more dangerous because I mean, pills, you have people manufacturing, you know the exact dose. Heroin, you never know what’s cut it with. You got people shooting it up into their arms a whole lot more often, at least than pills. You can shoot up pills but not many people do. With heroin you have people shooting it up and again you just never know where it’s coming from or what it’s cut with.
Prescription Painkillers Safer?
Matt: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I guess I don’t think anybody’s doing anything with pills as far as cutting with them fentanyl like right there.
Greg: No. I mean they come in whole form.
Matt: Exactly. You can’t really mess with them that much. The dangerous side of pills though is that they seem-
Greg: More accepted.
Matt: They’re more accepted. They’re clean, they’re in your grandmother’s medicine cabinet.
Greg: Eh, I’m just going to take a pill. Not a big deal.
Matt: Right. That’s the dangerous side of pills and maybe in the big picture pills are more deadly because of that, because I would have never started heroin without pills.
Or Are Painkillers More Deadly?
Greg: More deadly in different ways for sure.
Matt: In different ways, like big picture, I think because of pills more people overdose from heroin.
Greg: Yeah, very true. Yeah. That’s one thing. That’s a good point. That’s one big thing you got to watch out for pills is it’s almost like the alcohol thing. Alcohol is so accepted, even cigarettes. It’s legal, it’s accepted, yet more people die from cigarettes than anything and it’s still legal, and that really, I think if it was illegal a lot less people would smoke cigarettes, I think.
Matt: Absolutely.
Greg: A lot more people … even alcohol.
Matt: It wouldn’t be worth the risk of getting arrested. It’s not that great.
80% Of Heroin Users Start With Pills
Greg: Yeah. So you got to be very, very careful of the different dangers between the two. I think most people who get on heroin start on pills. I think 80% of people who use heroin had started on pills.
Matt: Yeah. That’s the statistic and that’s why it’s such an overwhelming epidemic right now. There’s a lot of people out there that are saying it’s because of this or it’s because of that. There’s a lot of reasons that this epidemic is where it’s at right now, but pills are absolutely number one. I mean that’s how it starting. That’s how it started for us and it started for us because we wanted to get high and that’s on the opposite end of the spectrum than somebody who maybe gets a back surgery and they’re prescribed these pills and they take them for 45 days and then all of a sudden they’re like, “Shit, I need another pill.”
Greg: And no one told them that. I have people writing in all the time to us where they’re like, “yeah, I got a script for 30 days. I had no idea when I stopped taking them I’d start feeling like this.” No doctor ever gave them a warning. Maybe a very quick warning of, “You got to be careful with this,” but no one’s giving them any type of education when they give them these pills. They’re on them for a month, two months, they come off and these doctors don’t know shit about how to get people off these pills and then they’re stuck. What the fuck do I do?
Matt: First of all, anything you do for 30 days in a row is going to turn into a habit, let alone if it’s ingesting a highly addictive substance. That is a recipe for disaster and I really feel for those people because they weren’t experimenting like we were and we were being stupid and kind of fell into something.
Greg: Almost did it to ourselves.
Matt: Yeah, we probably should have saw that coming, but a lot of people who don’t have any experience with it and they’re like, “Oh, my doctor said I need to take this twice a day for the next 30 days,” you’re going to find yourself with some issues on the other end of that 30 days that you might not be prepared for psychologically, physically. I mean, you’re going to be withdrawing and in your mind you’re like, “Well, maybe I’m still in pain. I should get another script,” and just one thing leads to another and people find themselves in a pretty terrible situation.
Greg: Yeah. So I mean, the big similarities between the two is they’re extremely addictive. The big differences I think is like Matt said, he made a great point. The pills are just sneakier, people accept them more. Eh, I can kind of play around with it, I can get a high a little bit, but then the pills will slowly grip ya and it’s easy to lead you to the heroin, which then just things kind of just spiral out of control. The thing, it’s like, well now I’m on heroin. I might as well almost kind of go down the rabbit hole even more.
Matt: Yeah. And I mean, depending on who you’re talking to when you’re looking for pills, even if it’s because your script ran out and you need them for pain, it’s not very hard for somebody to say like, “Hey, this is pretty much the same thing.” I mean that’s what we fell into and yeah, in some ways it is pretty much the same thing, but in a lot of ways it’s absolutely not.
This Is How I Started Heroin, Be Careful…
Greg: Just to give you a heed of warring, the way I started heroin was I was out one night, I had never had any plan to touch heroin and I wanted to get high that night. Now I wasn’t necessarily physically addicted to pills I don’t believe at the time either. I just kind of wanted to get high that night. Just I was young and just wanting to go out and party and I was with someone who had a little bit and we couldn’t get pills and she was like, “Well why don’t you just do like half a bag?” I was like, “Yeah. Half a bag is not going to hurt, right.” So I was like, I’ll just do it this once. Half a bag and I’ll be good, I’ll go back to the pills.”
Greg: But that’s where it all started. Literally the next day it spiraled out of control because at that point it was like, well, I did it once might as well just do it again. I’ll just go one last time. So once you do it once you’re fucked, you’re in that cycle. So don’t ever trick yourself into thinking that. If you ever get to that point, think of what I just said. Okay? You’re not going to do it just once. It’s not going to happen.
Matt: No, that’s exactly the truth. Yeah. I think that about covers it. I mean, again, there’s a big difference between if you’re taking pills right now and you’re thinking about using heroin because you’re running out or whatever, just stop this whole cycle right now. It will only get worse. I promise you. It’s not the same thing and it’s not going to be easier or more manageable by any means whatsoever.
Matt: If you guys need some advice or you have any questions about, even more in depth about the difference between pills and heroin or what withdrawal symptoms are like, check out some of our old videos or leave us a comment and let us know specific questions. We’d love to talk a little bit more about that kind of stuff.
Greg: Yes sir. Like, share, comment. See you guys soon.
Matt: See ya.
