&gt; Addicts are going to get fucked up on whatever they can find. If they can&#x27;t find opiates or whatever, they&#x27;re going to get fucked up on cough syrup, or booze or huffing paint or whatever.<p>While this is reminiscent of something Matt Dillon&#x27;s &quot;shameless dopefiend&quot; character from Drugstore Cowboy said, I&#x27;m not sure if this is true.<p>There is another thread of addiction research that establishes the notion of &quot;addiction as self-medication,&quot; in which users seek the drugs that work to alleviate their symptoms, be they physical or psychological. Anecdotally, I&#x27;ve experimented with a lot of substances, and opioids are the only class of compounds that I have sampled that work for me.<p>In addition, while it&#x27;s certainly true that, if you attach two acetyl groups to morphine you end up with something 2-3 times more potent by weight, I wonder if people&#x27;s conception of the &quot;hardness&quot; of drugs is somewhat artificial.