LIBERTY INFINITY

I’ve crystallized something in my mind – that drug-related deaths happen for basically two reasons:

1. fast or slow development of tolerance,
2. the size of the lethal dose.

Take LSD, for example. You could take it ten times, or even drink the whole bottle at once – and you still wouldn’t die. What you would get is an awful tolerance, and because your serotonin receptors are burned out, the dose would start working in reverse – a bad trip – instead of giving you that initial high. But you wouldn’t die.

Now take heroin. Its lethal dose is only about five times higher than the usual one, and on top of that, heroin builds up terrifyingly fast tolerance. That’s why users burn out like crooked used matches – they just want to get high one more time, and they’re dead.