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Sometimes, when one has an addiction, finding something else to be a "positive addiction" is the thing that will keep you on the straight and narrow. And it has to be something you're passionate enough about tha it makes being an addict much, much less desirable. It's an addictive personality thing. That's what I think Sherlock is talking about.
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Sherlock wasn't sleeping with Janine, and yes, he was using - whether he only did it for the case is debatable.
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I agree.
Well, Janine and he may have shared a bed, but there was no sex.
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Not even sure about that, as he has been out all night while she was in his bedroom.
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I don't know about heroin but if you don't tell people that you're high a lot of them won't notice (I had a very wild youth...) It is not like alcohol which one would smell. If you are already labelled as "strange" people just think it is your "strangeness".
Maybe Sherlock took just as much that he still would "work".
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TeaTime wrote:
Sherlock is sort of shockingly thin. Does anyone know if Benedict has to actively lose weight for the part? He never looks so thin in his other work.)
I've heard him say that he does, trying to look sort of otherworldly.
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I've heard him say that he does, trying to look sort of otherworldly.
Well he's certainly succeeded with the other worldly thing. I actually found myself thinking the other day that he looks rather like an elf. (A Tolkien elf of course)
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TeaTime wrote:
I've heard him say that he does, trying to look sort of otherworldly.
Well he's certainly succeeded with the other worldly thing. I actually found myself thinking the other day that he looks rather like an elf. (A Tolkien elf of course)
He's always had the otherworldly thing going, even before Sherlock. A big part of it is those unearthly eyes. *swoon*
And he would make an absolutly georgous elf.
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Lily wrote:
Sherlock's remark in HLV really confused me: 'Your best friend is a sociopath who solves crimes as an alternative to getting high.'
I found the whole interaction which that was a part of confusing - Sherlock was trying hard to get John to believe that he is attracted to sociopaths in general and subconsciously knew Mary was a sociopath, which is more than I can believe the subconscious capable of (more in the Sherlock / John / Mary dynamic thread on that point).
I believe Sherlock was in the drug den to try and fool Magnussen - he was too focused to be doing heroin seriously, and the house John found him in seemed to be a 'shooting gallery' for smack heads, not people doing cocaine.
BBC Sherlock seems to me to like excitement, I doubt he'd want to quiet his mind down. If he was doing drugs I think he too would go for cocaine.
I think the heroin has been brought in as an updated reference to canon (Moftiss do love updating canon) rather than to tell us anything particular about Sherlock. I'll be surprised if we see much more on this point in show - Moffat has said a couple of times he regards people doing drugs as 'twats'.
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The Sherlock in disguise in a drug den is directly taken from canon.
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True, but in canon he hadn't partaken of the drugs, hence the opportunity for varying Interpretations of the significance of Sherlock doing (probably) heroin in HLV.
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Criosdan wrote:
I don't know about heroin but if you don't tell people that you're high a lot of them won't notice (I had a very wild youth...) It is not like alcohol which one would smell. If you are already labelled as "strange" people just think it is your "strangeness".
Maybe Sherlock took just as much that he still would "work".
Oh, you can smell it.It smells a little like clorine. I remember this from my wild youth as a hard core punk in 1980's NYC.
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BTW, how did the drug become heroin? It was opium in the canon and opium was also on CAM's list.
I know, or at least I think I know, that opium isn't very popular these days so heroin would be a more obvious choice in an updated version but it's never suggested anywhere that it's heroin and not opium.
Isn't taking heroin also considerably more dangerous? Quite a risk for a case.
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Opium and heroin are related. It is an opioid.
Raven: Thanks for the information. Although, I have several experiences with drugs, heroin is none of them. (By the way, I'm a bit curious who would be really surprised if they knew. When your're different, all kinds of gossip appears...)
Swan: One can smoke it, inhalate it like cocaine.
Last edited by Criosdan (January 20, 2014 10:28 am)
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Criosdan wrote:
Opium and heroin are related. It is an opioid.
Raven: Thanks for the information. Although, I have several experiences with drugs, heroin is none of them. (By the way, I'm a bit curious who would be really surprised if they knew. When your're different, all kinds of gossip appears...)
Swan: One can smoke it, inhalate it like cocaine.
Actually, that's true-- and I've seen people do it--(never did it myself, wasn't completely without sense) people would put coke and heroin in ciggarettes and smoke it. When opium is smoked, it smells lovely-- like perfume. I've actually done that ( in the 80's) it was lovley, and I never did it again. People have also been known to mix it with Hashish.
Real junkies will shoot places , like between their toes, usually when they've ruined their veins, or want to avoid being obvious.
Yech. Nasty, but effective.
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They actually show the use of the spoon & flame in the start of this scene. That is a pretty clear hint towards heroin.
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Criosdan wrote:
Opium and heroin are related. It is an opioid.
Thanks, I did know that. But even drugs from the same chemical class can have quite different effects on the body, also much dependent on the dosage and the efficacy. I'm not an expert but as far as I remember, both of them are GABA agonists, much like benzodiazepines, but what makes them so dangerous is of course the effect on the dopamine system. I suspected that heroin might be a stronger dopamine agonist than opium, but on reflection it might just be the way it's taken and the dosage. Opium is mostly smoked and heroin mostly injected, so the effect of heroin would be stronger.
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Silverblaze: I meant to say that maybe they "modernized" the opium thingy.
The effect a drug will have, also depends which kind of person you are. Same drug can have different effects to different persons.
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I don't know much about drugs. I didn't know you can smoke heroin, for example. It makes more sense that he might do that than shooting. I missed the spoon thing and CAM thought it was opium, that's why I was confused. But heroin seems to be a more up to date version, true.
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silverblaze wrote:
Criosdan wrote:
Opium and heroin are related. It is an opioid.
Thanks, I did know that. But even drugs from the same chemical class can have quite different effects on the body, also much dependent on the dosage and the efficacy. I'm not an expert but as far as I remember, both of them are GABA agonists, much like benzodiazepines, but what makes them so dangerous is of course the effect on the dopamine system. I suspected that heroin might be a stronger dopamine agonist than opium, but on reflection it might just be the way it's taken and the dosage. Opium is mostly smoked and heroin mostly injected, so the effect of heroin would be stronger.
In terms of overall safety Sherlock would be unlikely to be buying street drugs; he would have no real difficulty in obtaining a supply of pharmaceutically produced diamorphine, aka heroin, and naloxone to reverse it if things went wrong. Human responses to opiates vary immensely, which is why hospitals have large supplies of naloxone on hand should patients respond badly to, for example, postoperative analgesia.
Molly's reaction in asserting that Sherlock is endangering his mind is somewhat weird if Sherlock was using opiates. There are a lot of drugs which mess up the mind more thoroughly than that group. Perhaps they were going for the stereotyped instant flash of recognition in the crack house so they could get onto the interesting stuff, but of course the scene sets us up for the shooting and the recognition that pain will kill unless it can be controlled.
I love the way in which Moffat sets up all of these connections between the scenes, it really is virtuoso stuff