You are almost certainly right. Mostly I meant that there would be safer forms of opioids than buying heroin in an alley but it was worded embarrassingly bad.

Wasn't trying to be abrasive, just a visceral reaction.

Both methamphetamine and heroin (as well as many other current drugs of abuse) were synthesized and used for their novel properties long before a drug market* ever existed. Just saying. Regulation changes the game significantly, or scheduling as it's generally referred to.

Some might find it interesting to discover that methamphetamine is actually a schedule two drug in the US, meaning that it has a high potential for abuse but still "some medicinal properties" and therefore can be prescribed by your local physician.

Where's the good doctor when you need him?

That's all good, but now that there is a market people are finding new ways to sell stuff to young people, such as bath salts that make you feel weird and give you lock jaw temporarily, or the disgusting thing called krocodil, which is cooked with such bad stuff that it rots flesh away. Without the market, there wouldn't be these drugs.

The market exists independently of the drugs. People are conditioned to want to get ****ed up from a multitude of influences. The small percentage of people who develop a significant enough problem to warrant the label of junkie are the ones that exemplify what we're talking about though.

You'll see ebbs and flows over time with the demand of certain drugs and there are reasons for that. I think there's a scene in The Dark Knight that illustrates this well: when the mob drug dealers are dealing with Scarecrow they note that their model depends on repeat business, while Scarecrow coyly replies "I told you my compound would take you places, I never said that they were places you wanted to go." We can relate this to bath salts and other synthetic drugs (such as PCP, LSD, MDMA, etc). The ones that make people routinely cut off their own genitals, mutilate innocent people, and other heinous crimes, generally stop being popular after a bit, i.e. their market share goes down.

tl;dr People are told to get ****ed up so they do, it's the really ****ed up ones that make these things an issue. That and cartels.

I just (re)watched Requiem for a Dream last night. Between that and this thread, I am seriously traumatized.

Amazing movie.

I don't like the character of the Mother bec it feels like she's there just to show that addiction (in her case diet pills, which are never talked about as a problem) can happen to anyone.

She's there to solidify the tragedy. Her downward spiral into extreme madness is something that many, but not all, can identify with. Gives the movie a more wide range of audience to impress upon.

Every single character life ev line goes up at the beginning and plummets at the end; a tragedy indeed. Unlike most movies, where we are made to identify with the main characters, then we sympathize with the protagonist as he or she gets into trouble, then at the end they finish triumphantly, in Requiem for a Dream, it just gets worse and worse as the movie goes on.

no, I used stuff in college that you can buy at GNC (or could have bought) that would cause you to fail a NCAA test though. Also used a lot of vicodin/hydrocodone (prescribed).

This is also a bad example when both the legal/health consequences are minimal, with little addictive properties and the benefits may result in 6-7 figure jobs or signing bonuses. Probably similar to people using adderall in med school

More importantly Ellen Burstyn gives the best performance since the turn of the century.

Supplements have become much more regulated in the past 10-20 years, but occasionally things with ethamphetamine/similar drugs still slip through for a while. And people go nuts for them.

Because drugs, that's why! #WinnersDon'tUseDrugs

I think that's a good analogy and I oppose that too.

Alcohol is already legal, and therefore, alcohol companies are able to lobby against legalized marijuana.

Had a really uncomfortable situation in the 0E game today. There was an elderly man who twice called otr in the stud rounds when he couldn't beat the pair shown by the opponent's board and didn't have a low either. Back in my NYC days players were allowed -and since it was the game culture many did- to toss that last bet back if they wanted to on the theory that the other player had a brain-fart.

A floor passed by, I mentioned it, and got the expected answer: He's an adult. Still don't like it but there really isn't anything to do about it.

I thought in some old stud games it was an automatic return of the last bet if you couldn't beat the board, so some people called it just so they could see what the other guy had. Not sure about Stud 8 though.

The floor told me that they used to have that rule calling it something that I can't remember. That rule's been gone a while.

It a funny story why they got rid of that rule. I was told a guy kept doing it over and over on 7th (in stud hi) hoping people would just muck when they were bluffing with only pair on board

There's always got to be a player like that somewhere in the cesspool.

Is that a +EV decision?

4 hours later and I still can't figure out what you mean.

Oh ****, I was referring to this.

I can see why that was confusing, sorry Howard.

Just don't do it again! I am old and starting to doubt my wits.

I think it's definitely +EV for everyone except the tilt-o-fish to have an obvious angleshooter in the cesspool.

Someone mentioned adderall and Med School a few posts back... has there been any cases of poker players using adderall for tournaments? I have heard that the Magic: The Gathering tournament scene is rife with adderall to help people grind through the multi-day events.

Can someone give me an example where a stop and go on the flop is clearly the best play? I'll post a hand that generated this discussion, but would love to hear some examples.