And that junkie's name was Tiny Tim. And now you know ... the rest of the story.
Anyone care to translate "Street Oscar" for me? Is it a statuette of some sort?
I'm not really a rock-smoking kind of guy...
Why do all these junkies keep giving me crack?
Oops, he plays a heroin addict. I'm so uncultured!
I always thought that was charming about smokers -- mostly, they'll give a cigarette to anyone who asks.
6 -- have you hung out in many dive bars lately? (not that I have, but) Some smokers have gotten a lot more territorial in recent years, what with the price of a pack and all.
6: wait 'till they're $15/pack
otoh, it's true of addicts too, often.
Or maybe it's just the "hot chick" vs. "47-y.o. balding man" distinction.
re: 9
Cigarettes are over $10 a pack, in the UK.
Yeah, they're expensive in Canadia too. I got to the point where I'd share anything I bought domestically, but the nice cigarettes I brought over the border b/c they weren't available there? Sorry, buddy.
I guess I'm thinking mostly about quite awhile back. It just always looked like this moment of complete empathy: "Dude, that could be me with no cigarette." The kind of thing that people have a hard time doing with housing, or health care, in quite the same immediate way.
re: 12
Yeah, they're about $2 a pack in Czech. So it's easier to be generous when there.
I just tend to accept though, that if I go out, and am one of only one or two smokers, then about half the non-smokers will starting wanting to pinch ciggies off me once they get drunk.
This anti-smoking 'ad' struck me as terribly clever. I suppose it wouldn't work as well to hand them out to people, because you'd eventually get beaten up.
It just always looked like this moment of complete empathy: "Dude, that could be me with no cigarette."
That's sort of how I feel about it, and I do think it's a genuine social benefit of smoking. And certainly people are that way about giving someone a light (which I realize is also because it involves such a minimal sacrifice as to barely even count as a sacrifice, but still).
and I do think it's a genuine social benefit of smoking.
Much in the way social networks are developed via needle sharing, but minus the disease risk which spices up the interaction.
In the part of the midwest where I currently reside, cigarrettes are still pretty cheap: around $3-$4 dollars a pack for the standard stuff and about $5-$6 a pack for brands like Djarum or Nat Sherman's. Even if I'm smoking Sherman's, though, I'll still give anyone a cigarrette who asks, the justification being that where I'm from, cigarettes are about $6 a pack and Nicotine withdrawl is no fun, no matter how much smokes cost.
I just tend to accept though, that if I go out, and am one of only one or two smokers, then about half the non-smokers will starting wanting to pinch ciggies off me once they get drunk.
You know, you could have said that once they get drunk they start wanting to pinch fags. But no...
More data: marihuana is more difficult to come by and less adictive than tobacco; and yet I am generally glad to share, as are most other people I've met (in the relevant subset of people I've met).
Crime hasn't diminished in our neighborhood since the crackhouse was demolished, you know.
22: Okay, I guess you still have some street cred, then.
21: dope has always been a pretty social drug, I think.
Oops, he plays a heroin addict. I'm so uncultured!
This brings up a question I've got about The Wire: what's the crack/heroin breakdown on the show? The load of drugs that Omar just stole was referred to as heroin, I believe. Does the collective even sell cocaine? Seems like heroin gets mentioned a lot more on the show, but I can't imagine that it's as popular a drug as crack. But maybe I'm completely wrong about that or forgetting previous references to cocaine.
So we're all agreed that addiction is good for people's moral well-being?
24: Don't bogart that joint, man!
Has "street oscar" any provenance outside The Wire?
25: I don't know about the show, but you smoke crack (it's a synthetic form after freebase cocaine, basically) and bang heroin (usually). Do they show this? Crack was (is?) sold in glassine vials, heroin might be but also baggies, papers, etc. Cities & regions go through cycles of availability, so either way is plausible.
I never heard it used there, but this stuff is pretty regional.
Hasn't there been a lot more heroin-smoking lately, as it's gotten purer?
32: Could be. It's a very different high though, so generally speaking not interchangable. I'm very much out of touch with this though, so I don't know what is current.
I took "Street Oscar" to mean he feels like he's won an Oscar for great acting, but the reward is from the street, not from the Ministry of Oscars or whoever hands those things out.
32 -- when I was in college people talked about smoking "brown hash" which I took to mean a form of opium. I never saw this activity actually occurring though.
34 -- that's what I was thinking in 2; but diligent searching has not come up with any references for this happening.
34 gets it right, although I thought it was obvious.
Although it would be great if the Street Oscar was made of garbage and drugs, there is in fact no such object.
I've also read that in a particular locale, there will be cycles where stimulant use (speed, coke, etc.) predominates for a period of years followed by periods where sedative use (mostly heroin) predominates. Addicts get too speeded out and need to wind down for a while, but then get bored and go back to the fast stuff.
35: I doubt it (but again, these things are regional sometimes) as brown hash vs. black hash is a way of describing hash (a marijuana oil product)
38 -- Really? I didn't think addiction was transferable from one substance to another.
40: Yep. Crack is definitely a gateway drug to heroin.
It's pretty clear that Bubbles is addicted to heroine, not cocaine. I don't know about the general drug economy of the show, though, because it doesn't make all that much sense to me that the entire town would be on H.
But fashions can still change if new initiators tend to become addicted to the currently fashionable drug. (And of course lots of people are multiple-drug users.)
But actually, I just remember reading that stuff about the cycles, and don't really know how true it is.
38, 40: It isn't. Some people don't play favourites, but most serious users do. You can also easily get hooked on something if you start using it as a distraction from a different addiction.
I suspect these cycles are more based on availability (which can be based on market control) than on any sort of consumer preference. Some of the addicts may be the same people of course; forced off one thing they may well pick up a new habit.
But fashions can still change . . .
How come no one ever talks about "crack chic"?
41: That isn't addiction transference though.
addicted to heroine
...He can't stop reading those Superwoman comix?
D'Angelo and some other characters on The Wire insufflate cocaine.
29: they've shown some intravenous heroin use, but also some snorting of heroin (recall Wallace being helped through withdrawal by Daniels in season 1) and some snorting of ambiguous substances (this season, before Namond got jumped outside Cutty's gym -- I would imagine that was supposed to be coke). I don't think they've shown anyone freebasing, or if they have they haven't shown it recently.
But unless "harron" is being used to refer generically to powdered drugs, the drug trade on the show seems to mostly be about heroin. Which is weird, because there's a lot of talk about "vialing up", and the product is definitely distributed in vials. And Bubbles' poison-laced dose was presumably heroin, but definitely in a vial. I suppose the portrayal of this detail could be an error on the part of the show, but that doesn't seem very likely.
49: that doesn't make sense to me (blowing?). You mean inhaling? (I haven't seen the show)
51: or does `insufflate' imply some mechanical aid like an asthma inhaler?
Does anybody inhale cocaine? I thought the point was to get into your sinuses, not your lungs.
53: no, you're right `inhale' was bad terminology for `snort'. I just didn't understant `insufflate'.
55: yes, and smoked. It isn't so popular (or wasn't, I should say)
oh, you can eat it for a body-high too, but that's a pretty expensive way of going about things.
It isn't so popular
Always depending on context of course.
59: That's part of the reason why smoking heroin isn't so popular --- might as well get opium (assuming you have a source). cheaper & easier.
(That image comes from what looks like a kinda interesting site BTW.)
60: Yeah, but with heroin you don't find yourself needing to dispose of stacks of incomprehensible poetry once you sober up. That's the Heroin Advantage™.
Sorry -- 64 was supposed to have a link attached.
There's also just about zero opium on the usual drugs market.
67 -- Another reason to pine for the good old days.
Also hard to find these days: laudanum.
67: used to be reasonably available, I guess it's dried up.
It's pretty clear that Bubbles is addicted to heroine
Such a tragedy, the missed signals between Kema and him.
...So his problem was a similar one to that of Robert Palmer?
it doesn't make all that much sense to me that the entire town would be on H.
Baltimore leads the nation in per-capita heroin use.
Apparently Baltimore deals in a unique kind of rock heroin:
The city has had a thriving heroin market since the 1970s, but the DEA reported that Baltimore has now become a center for distribution of a unique form of heroin processed in South America that is "significantly higher in purity" than the national average.
A few years ago, South American cocaine cartels began producing high-grade heroin to respond to American's increasing demand for the drug, the DEA's Hocker said.
The cartels - trying to avoid a battle with traditional heroin distributors from Southeast Asia who were established in New York and Miami - chose Baltimore as one of their U.S. distribution points, he said.
Baltimore also continues to lead the country in both heroin- and cocaine-related hospital emergency room admissions, according to the DEA.
In the first six months of the year, 159 of every 100,000 residents entered a Baltimore emergency room for a heroin-related overdose or medical condition, according to statistics from the Drug Abuse Warning Network, cited by the DEA.
So, not the stuff that you'd get from Bayer.
All that stuff belongs in the blockquote tag, which apparently don't carry over past break tags. Which is some shit.
What's even weirder is that the blockquote tags work like you want them to in the RSS feed version of the post.
I'd heard that about the South American heroin; I just hadn't realized that heroin was such a problem in Baltimore. When I think street drugs in the US, I think cocaine.
It's horrible, but I'm imagining officials of the city of Baltimore sitting down with representatives of the cartel, trying to work out a deal in which the major distribution point shifts to, say, Charleston.
74: Use p and /p tags and it works.
people, people. addicts have preferences, and don't usually go back after starting to mainline, but otherwise will snort or smoke heroin quite happily, and the high is pretty much the same. you can also cook the tar or chunks into a liquid and snort the liquid through a plastic straw or dismembered ballpoint pen. so gross, though. I think the cycle thing is true.
